NEW YORK — For the New York Rangers, they had history on their sides in approaching a seventh game against the Flyers. Five times in Madison Square Garden history was there a Game 7. Five times had there been Rangers victories. Of course there was reason to believe this time wouldn’t be any different, no matter how well the Flyers had played in a Game 6 victory the night before.

“Coming home last night I was so disappointed,” Henrik Lundqvist said after overseeing a 2-1 victory over the Flyers that sends Lundqvist and his Rangers to the second round to face the Pittsburgh Penguins. “But at the same time I was mad, because we couldn’t come up with a better performance (Tuesday) night. At the same time, to play a Game 7 at home, and to win, that was the inspiration.

“We played a really strong series. I think we were the better team.”

In the deciding game, they showed that only in one period. A series where neither side would endure a two-game losing streak may have come down to that telling second period, when the Rangers scored both of their goals while outshooting the Flyers, 18-5.

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“We played really good in the second,” Brad Richards said. “We just kept the pace up, had short shifts, got everybody involved. We killed a couple penalties and buried some goals. That just got everyone in it, got the fans in it, and you could just see our legs going. We kind of took over that period.”

The Flyers were in no position to argue the point.

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As is ritual, Kimmo Timonen sipped his coffee and surveyed the scene Wednesday before a do-or-what-became-don’t game for the Flyers at Madison Square Garden.

Asked what he ponders at such moments, Timonen said, “I’m drinking coffee right now, that’s going through my mind.”

But there were other juices flowing through the Flyers’ 39-year-old defenseman, creative ones, some more emotional, too.

Timonen’s contract is expiring, and despite having had a healthy and usually competent season, he says he hasn’t made a decision as to whether he’d be interested in coming back for more.

While Timonen has long pondered a more permanent return to his native Finland, the Flyers remain interested in re-signing him, but at what monetary value?

Timonen said he’d address that issue at some point. But at that time, on the brink of a seventh game in the first round against the Rangers, he didn’t see any clouds in his coffee that would move him to lean one way or another on that subject.

“That’s behind me,” Timonen said. “If I think about that, then I’m going to miss the game. I have to put that behind me and focus on the game.”

Now he’s forced to focus on the future.

• • •

Before the game, Rangers coach Alain Vigneault challenged his better players to perform up to their capabilities.

This is a Rangers team that through the first six games had seen star defenseman Ryan McDonagh not contribute at all offensively (minus-2 rating), top forward Rick Nash underperform as usual (no goals, four assists), have goalie Henrik Lundqvist look very ordinary at times and was held down by a power play that was barely clicking at better than a 10 percent clip (3 for 28).

Add it all up and it was easy to conclude that although the Rangers have appeared to have the upper hand most of the time in this series, they hadn’t been good. Nash and McDonagh didn’t register anything on the board in Game 7, either. But in the end, they all played good enough to win.

“We won and that’s all that matters,” Nash said. “We are moving on and we’ll enjoy that tonight.”